All Articles Tagged "photo-sharing"

Instagram revealed updates to its terms of service today, alerting users that they will be sharing data collected through the app with Facebook, the company that purchased it for a $1 billion earlier this year.

More shocking to many is language that suggests Instagram will sell user photos to third parties without pay for the person who snapped the picture.

The line that has got everyone frothing at the mouth is this:

You agree that a business may pay Instagram to display your photos in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions without any compensation to you.

According to The Verge, this and other language in the terms of service are very similar to those in place for other online services. Moreover, the new terms actually make things clearer and “more limited.”

“Instagram can’t sell your photos to anyone, for example. It simply doesn’t have permission,” the article says. But “an advertiser can pay Instagram to display your photos in a way that doesn’t create anything new — so Budweiser can put up a box in the timeline that says ‘our favorite Instagram photos of this bar!’ and put user photos in there, but it can’t take those photos and modify them, or combine them with other content to create a new thing.”

In other words, you can appear in an ad without first being asked for permission, though your photo can’t be altered with a logo or anything else. The New York Timeshas a few other details, including the fact that there’s no way to opt out short of deleting your account.

Instagram has heard the shrieks of anger and, reports CNN, has tweeted a promise to provide more information soon.

The new terms go into effect on January 16 and apply to about 100 million users. We’ve written just this week about the concerns over privacy and control of personal data. Do these new terms of service concern you?

A fightcontinues to brew between Twitter and Instagram with new strategies launched this week. On Monday, Twitter released updates to its iOS and Android mobile apps, now including its own photo filter and photo-editing features through Twitter Photos. Twitter now offers eight photo filters (to Instagram’s 18), auto-enhancement features for color and balance, and a birds-eye view, allowing users to see what their photo would look like with all of the filters at once.

Meanwhile, Instagram updated its iOS app, featuring a new, quicker camera, allowing for integration with foursquare and adding another filter called Willow. Android users will have to wait for most of the new features, but the Willow filter is available for Instagram Android users.

Everyone is snap happy with the photos these days. What are the features that you think are most important on a photo-sharing app? On Sunday, Instagram photos were no longer visible on Twitter. Twitter says that was an Instagram decision, made when it was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion earlier this year.

In the photo-sharing fight on social media, Twitter and Instagram are at odds. Twitter is becoming more insular with its features and restricting what outside developers and applications can do on the site. And it’s trying to build out its own photo-sharing tools in an attempt to compete with uber-popular Instagram, which is now owned by Facebook.

Instagram, for its part, pulled its integration with Twitter on Wednesday, making it harder for users to share their Instagrammed photos on the micro-blogging site. Currently, Instagram photos appear cropped or otherwise incorrect on Twitter. Eventually, users will still be able post an Instagram photo to Twitter, but when someone clicks on the link, they will be taken to an Instagram-hosted site rather than seeing the image through Twitter.

Tech insiders are complaining online, saying that both sides are at fault and that the overall losers in this situation are the users. Are you losing out?

It’s no secret that Instagram has been the hottest mobile app this year, with more than 100 million users and Facebook buying the company for nearly $1 billion.

Therefore, it makes sense for Twitter to want to build out its own photo-sharing tool, complete with Instagram-like filters. The New York Timesreports:

“In the coming months, Twitter plans to update its mobile applications to introduce filters for photos that will allow people to share altered images on Twitter and bypass Instagram, the popular mobilecentric photo-sharing network, according to people who work at the company but asked not to be named as they are not allowed to discuss unannounced projects.”

Just last week, research company Simply Measured found that 54 percent of Interbrand’s Top 100 Brands were on Instagram, compared to 98 percent that are on Facebook and Twitter. The top five brands on Instagram as of November 1, 2012 were MTV (994,733 followers), Starbucks (876,987), Burberry (557,489), Nike (527,300), and Gucci (217,349).

Those brands that are using Instagram are also turning to the site more often. In Simply Measured’s August 2012 study, only 26 percent of the top 100 brands posted at least one picture a week on Instagram. This was up to 34 percent in the November study. Additionally, 20 percent of brands now have more than 10,000 followers on Instagram.

There has already been some back-and-forth as to whether Twitter is right to launch an Instagram competitor. What do you think?